Saturday, August 15, 2009

Help one person at a time...

Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.

-Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

If you change the way you look a things...

If you change the way you look a things, the things you look at change.

-Wayne W. Dyer

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life...When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other...and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. ...Well, it is when people really listen to us, with quiet facinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way.

-Brenda Ueland

Thursday, February 15, 2007

There is no smaller package in the world...

There is no smaller package in the world that that of a person all wrapped up in himself.

-William Sloane Coffin

I began to wonder if fighting fire with fire...

I began to wonder if fighting fire with fire didn't just leave more ashes.

-William Sloane Coffin

Sacrifice in and of itself confers no sanctity...

Sacrifice in and of itself confers no sanctity.

William Sloane Coffin

The primary problems of the planet arise not from the poor...

The primary problems of the planet arise not from the poor, for whom education is the answer; they arise from the well-educated, for whom self-interest is the problem.

-William Sloane Coffin

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

An eye for an eye is about limiting vengeance...

An eye for an eye is about limiting vengeance. You can only take an eye out for an eye; you may not kill someone for knocking out your eye. It means restraining tribal violence.

-Karen Armstrong

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

When you grow up on fantasy, you grow old in brutality...

I recall a line from William Butler Yeats that when you grow up on fantasy, you grow old in brutality. Fantasy is fine as a vacation, but when it becomes the bulk of our daily diet I fear that we no longer know the difference between fantasy and reality - and that breeds brutality.

-John Dominic Crossan

Monday, February 05, 2007

The centrality of our mission is to love each other...

... the centrality of our mission is to love each other. That means caring for our neighbors. And this does not mean bickering about the fine points of doctrine.

-Katharine Jefferts Schori